Support For The People Of Okinawa Against Fresh Build-Up Of US Military Bases On Their Soil

The General Assembly of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, at its 17th Congress in Hanoi, Vietnam:

RECALLING earlier resolutions on the complete removal of all foreign military bases or facilities from the national soil of each state in the world;

REAFFIRMING the 1969 Fact-Finding Mission of International Lawyers to Okinawa, then occupied by U.S. forces as a result of World War Two and used as forward bases to bomb North Vietnam; as well as another Fact-Finding Mission of 1996, which revealed numerous violations and infringements of human rights, environmental pollution and heinous crimes committed by military personnel stationed in Okinawa against the people of Okinawa, who have had to bear the heavy burden of foreign military presence amounting to more than three-quarters of U.S. military facilities in all Japan being sited on their homeland;

HAVING IN MIND that these and other fact-finding missions have demonstrated that the military occupation by the U.S. and the violations of the human rights of the people of Okinawa by U.S. military personnel run counter to the evolving norm of international law, which requires the immediate return of all U.S. military bases to the authentic owners of the land in Okinawa;

CONFIRMING that the U.S. forces and the government of Japan are about to construct a large military port and a huge military base with two runways in Henoko district, Nago City in the northern part of Okinawa Island, while at the same time they are about to build a helipad in the midst of residential areas at Higashison Takae, north of Nago City, according to a “roadmap concluded between Japan and the USA for a Realignment of US Forces” publicised in May 2006;

EXPRESSING FULL APPRECIATION for the peace-loving Okinawan and Japanese peoples’ campaigns against the so-called Guam Agreement which, recently authorised by the Diet, requires the Japanese government to pay the most of the costs of constructing new military facilities for the US Marines on Guam, to which they would be removed from Okinawa;

DEEPLY CONCERNED that these new military base constructions pose a threat to world peace and also damage the very survival of endangered species such as the dugong, a common treasure of mankind;

NOW THEREFORE RESOLVES to support and to continue to assist, together with all lawyers and peace-loving people on the planet, the struggle of the people of Okinawa and all Japan since their struggle makes an important contribution to the struggle for world peace.